Nba, Covid: 10 positive for the Chicago Bulls, postponed the first 2 races 2021-22

The wind of the pandemic is blowing in the Windy City. So strong that two Chicago Bulls games have been postponed for Covid, tomorrow’s against Detroit and Thursday in Toronto: they are the first two of 2021-22 to be postponed due to the coronavirus.

The situation

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Chicago has 10 players in the anti Covid protocol, plus a few staff members and two commentators. The first to get sick was Nikola Vucevic in November: the Montenegrin lost 7 games. December turned into a terrible month for the Bulls: first Coby White and Javonte Green got sick, then the list grew out of all proportion to include DeMar DeRozan, Matt Thomas, Derrick Jones Jr, Ayo Dosunmu, Stanley Johnson, Zach LaVine, Troy Brown Jr and Alize Johnson. Stanley Johnson had been hired as a substitute, with the NBA which, given the emergency, had allowed the Bulls to exceed the limit of 17 players on the roster: he did not have time to set foot on the pitch and he immediately fell ill. The Bulls would have the minimum number of 8 players available to take the field Tuesday against Detroit, but given the outbreak that continues to add names and considering that Chicago has also quarantined some staff members and even its two starting commentators, the Nba has opted to postpone the next two games. White and Green, the first two to stop, are close to returning and from here to the game with the Lakers on Sunday at 9.30 pm in Italy the Bulls could find other players.

protocol

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At the moment there are 20 players in the NBA in the Covid protocol: half are of the Bulls, which have become the first serious outbreak of 2021-22. “At least we will have herd immunity” tried to play down Vucevic. All the players and the entire staff had undergone two doses of the vaccine and some of them had also had the third dose (in NBA 97% of the players are vaccinated and over 60% have done the third dose): it is not enough to prevent the situation from becoming worrying. The health protocol in force this year provides for two different types of restrictions, for vaccinated and unvaccinated. The vaccinated, in fact, return to normal life: periodic but not daily tests, freedom of movement both at home and away, precautions such as masks and distancing dictated by local rules and not by protocol. Since the beginning of December, after the first cases, the Bulls have moved on to daily tests for all, which have highlighted the new cases. Across the NBA, the number of positives has increased dramatically over the past 3 days, with at least 10 new cases, most of them concentrated in Chicago. The first matches postponed for Covid by regulation could have been avoided, given that the Bulls reached the minimum number of players to be deployed: the Nba preferred caution. Last year, 31 matches were postponed due to the virus: the league had structured the calendar in two parts, providing space for any recoveries from March onwards. This year it is not like that and the season has returned to the 82 “canonical” regular season games: finding space to recover the two postponed matches will not be easy.